Texas City Dike

Texas City answered silt with a wall, and after Carla it added more. The 1961 hurricane put four feet of floodwater over much of the city. Seawall plans delayed since 1949 were finished, and construction of a twenty-three-foot barrier began in 1962, with the last section completed in 1985. An inner levee eight feet high went up along Moses Lake in 1982, with Archimedes screw pumps for rainwater. Because land subsidence worsened the flooding, the city stopped pumping groundwater and brought Brazos River water to its industries.

What the plaque says

Texas City Dike In early efforts to develop a major port here on Galveston Bay, Texas City capitalists, acting against the advice of engineers, dug a ship channel directly through and across the Bay's natural water line. As a result, currents carried silt into the man-made channel that required constant dredging to keep the waters navigable. To solve this problem, the Texas City dike was designed to divert the flow of silt by deflecting the waters of Galveston Bay out to the Gulf of Mexico. With the help of civic leader Hugh B. Moore, funds for the dike's construction were authorized in the 1913 U. S. Rivers and Harbors Act. Under the direction of William Moore and Lt. Col. C. S. Riche of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers' Galveston District, the dike was completed in 1915 at a cost of $1.4 million. Originally 28,200 feet in length, it was extended to its current 5.4 miles in 1934. Thus protected from the bay's tidal action and from excessive silting, the Texas City channel became a busy shipping lane, which led to significant economic growth for the community. In the latter part of the 20th century, the Texas City dike became a prime recreational site in this part of Galveston County, boasting fishing piers, bait shops, boat launch sites, refreshment stands, and a marina. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 8.3 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• The Strand — 8.4 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Moody Mansion — 8.7 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 8.8 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.

More markers nearby

• First Aero Squadron — steps away
• The Texas City Disaster — 0.2 mi
• Shoal Point and Half Moon Shoal Lighthouse — 0.4 mi
• William Jefferson Jones — 0.4 mi